The
limited and cosmetic gains in women's rights in Afghanistan have
not been introduced by bullets from U.S./NATO's guns, so the
reduction of U.S./NATO troops will not compromise these initial
gains.

Moreover,
as many as 20,000 U.S./NATO troops will be authorized
to stay for another 10 years beyond 2014 when a U.S. Afghanistan
Bilateral
Security Agreement is agreed upon within the next year. The Obama
administration has already ensured the continued presence of U.S.
forces in Afghanistan in Article number 6 of the Enduring Strategic
Partnership Agreement which states that "Afghanistan
shall provide U.S. forces continued access to and use of Afghan
facilities through 2014, and beyond as may be agreed in The Bilateral
Security Agreement, for the purposes of combating al-Qaeda and its
affiliates, training the Afghan National Security Forces ( who
are shooting back at them!), and other mutually determined missions to advance shared security
interests.'

Where
are Afghan women's rights in this strategy?

On
March
14, 2011, the Washington Post featured Rajiv Chandrasekaran's
article, "In
Afghanistan, U.S. shifts strategy on women's rights as it eyes wider
priorities' .
Chandrasekaran recently made waves with his description of "the war
within the Afghan war' in his new book
Little America.
In his 2011 article, he quoted a senior U.S. official who said,
"Gender issues are going to have to take a back seat to other
priorities. There's no way we can be successful if we maintain every
special interest and pet project. All those pet rocks in our rucksack
were taking us down."

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What
the senior U.S. official was saying was, "Women's
rights? We have higher, "front-seat' priorities. Women's rights
are 'pet rocks' that are 'taking us down.'"

Be
friends, talk, and build'

"If
you want to talk and build, it is impossible to start by fighting.
When you kill a human being, what is there to build?"

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"I
have a pain and my husband and fellow Afghan citizens, men
and women, share the pain with me. It is the pain of being treated as
less than humans. We are human beings. We have wishes. War has
brought this pain on us. War kills our joy and hides our tears."

"I
dream that war will end in Afghanistan someday, so Afghans will
exercise their right to live, study and work. Fighting brings hate
and vengeful thoughts and feelings. I wish that the Shakespearean
play could be performed in Afghanistan someday, though there's
concern that there'll be trouble."

Kathy Kelly is a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence and a co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end economic sanctions against Iraq. She and her companions helped send over 70 delegations to Iraq, from 1996 to (more...)